We are currently at 98% complete in diagnostic testing. Students will continue to be tested as they come in.

K-3 is finishing up DIBELS and KEEP testing this week and participation percentage is trending to hit 100%

We are working this week on ensuring all students have an individual expectation for iready time based on their diagnostic score, that we make it clear to students and parents and that we are monitoring it.

We will be giving the growth monitoring iready assessment next week because it will end the first small group cycle, preparing for the interim.

This week we will be selecting the standards check iready assessment that will be given as the interim in 2 weeks.

DDI

We will finish our first round of ddi meetings by Friday. They have been enlightening, we’ve learned a lot and have a good idea where to go next month based off of what we’ve learned.

We have teachers completing the tracker task each week creating action items. I am considering if this is the best data for them to be so focused on and discussing with my leadership team and some key player teachers whether we should shake that up a bit to focus more on mastery data.

Every Math and ELA teacher will be signing up for a free trial of Mountain resources to see if they like it as a comprehensive standard review curriculum.

Culture:

Grade level outings are happening during the month of October and we look forward to the benefits those connections with students and teachers will add to both retention and school work!

We did classroom best practice walk throughs last week and we will do them again this week in Staff calls, teachers love it!

Jr. Ambassadors will start working on videos that we will use to broadcast what success looks like here and their best tips.

PD:

I sent the link to confirm their sites in the outlook invite. I haven’t loved the participation so I will encourage it again this week in an email.

Observation Feedback:

This month we observed for OTR’s and pacing. Much of what we found was good. Lacey created a training for new teachers and we invited others we felt could benefit based off of our observations and it was a great meeting last Friday.

Instruction:

MS teachers are loving the smaller groups, two session model we moved to this year. They have found it much more effective.

Small group sessions are targeting yellow students (tested 1-2 years below grade level)

Interventionists are in full swing to remediate intensely the students who tested 3+ grade levels below where they should be.

Reminder: Whenever you send a newsletter or something similar, remember to cc William. He likes to be involved and sends these to his team. Thanks!

Workplace Word of the Week: HEPEATED

This is from an email from my sister who works at Johns Hopkins School of Ed Reform:

My friends coined a word: hepeated. For when a woman suggests an idea and it's ignored. But then a guy says the same thing and everyone loves it.

"Ugh, I got hepeated in that meeting again today."

Or "He totally hepeated you."

This is a really great article about a generational study of the effect of technology on today's teens:

Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/

Here's a short sample:More comfortable in their bedrooms than in a car or at a party, today’s teens are physically safer than teens have ever been. They’re markedly less likely to get into a car accident and, having less of a taste for alcohol than their predecessors, are less susceptible to drinking’s attendant ills. Psychologically, however, they are more vulnerable than Millennials were: Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. It’s not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.

Can business leaders rely on electronic and social media as a primary mechanism for seeding the ideas that build effective teams and cultures?

Laura was recently appointed to a high-profile role with international responsibility and a diverse group of employees geographically dispersed around the globe. It’s a dream job, one in which Laura can apply her considerable experience to make a huge impact on her company’s success by serving customers and generating repeat business. But the stakes for Laura and her team are high. They need to reverse a three-quarters-long downward trend in sales and address growing customer attrition.

After taking the new position, Laura realized that she’d inherited a group that had rarely met in person and had not gelled as a team. Some of the leaders working for her had never even been in the same room together, relying instead solely on electronic communications. Therefore, Laura’s first leadership decision was to conduct an in-person strategy and team building session, which would bring all of her team’s key decision makers together for the first time.Unfortunately, just weeks after her appointment, Laura’s company instituted travel restrictions in an effort to cut costs. When we met to plan the team session, the meeting appeared to be in jeopardy.“I’ve gotten 8 calls today alone from employees asking me if the meeting is still on,” she told me. “I know I’m taking a risk, but this session is critical to our success, so I’m moving forward with it. With the tough goals we have ahead this quarter and next, I need these folks to look each other in the eye and commit to achieve them.”“I can’t lead by tweet.”Like most good leaders I know, Laura understands the difference between communication and conversation. Today’s social media and electronic technology offers leaders a great way to share information or give directives, but rarely are they an adequate replacement for the activities that build real relationships and establish the foundation required for a strong team culture. For that, you need conversation, and a forum for the intimacy of idea exploration and exchange.Research shows that most human communication occurs in the non-verbal form, which cannot be gleaned through text or tweet. And, despite our access to sophisticated technology, emojis are not replacements for visually reading facial expressions, anymore than 140 characters constitutes a robust conversation.With the extreme reliance that most organizations place on electronic forms of communication, it’s important for leaders to be aware of its limitations and take extra precautions to assure that they are communicating directly and unambiguously as much as possible. Here are some important communication considerations:

You’re not working with every available toolThe use of email, texting, intranets and other forms of electronic communication offers access to only some of the available forms of human communication. The risk of others misinterpreting your message or gaining an incomplete understanding of it is huge, so careful crafting of verbal and written communications is essential. It’s important to know what you want the ‘take home’ message to be and what impressions you want to avoid.Therefore, the ability to critically think, write and verbally communicate now has equal value to the technical competencies that are required for success in your functional area.

Sleep on itIt’s tempting to quickly dash off an email or post something on your company website, but taking time to carefully review it and having a few other people examine important communications before they’re sent is essential. I once had an editor who insisted on reading important articles that she planned to post after thinking about them overnight. She often made corrections that improved the final product after having a chance to sleep on it.As a general rule, the more you feel a communication is urgent, the more important it is to carefully review it. If you don’t have time to "sleep on it," at least employ the 15-minute rule: Wait 15 minutes after composing any communication and re-read it before posting or sending. Think about the message from the receiver’s perspective, which will give you a sense of the impact of the message. That may be very different from your intent.

Know the color of their eyesMany leaders rely on technology to reduce the cost of doing business, which allows for the creation of global teams. However, it’s important to budget for periodic in-person meetings to maintain a strong team culture. At the very least, well-designed video collaboration activities is a must if you truly want to foster healthy communications across your team and cement peer-to-peer working relationships.

Find ways to develop personal connectionsOne of the most frequent complaints that I hear from clients whose teams are virtual is how hard it is to establish the kind of personal connection that you might otherwise experience with someone who is working in the same office. With team calls, for example, individuals will log or dial in at the appointed time, and business will be discussed. But once that’s completed, everyone goes back to his or her own job in regions around the world. There’s no easy way to drop by a co-worker’s cubicle for a chat if they’re in London and you’re in Los Angeles.One leader I know devised an interesting approach to the problem of geography when working to build his team. Each Friday, he holds a "social hour" conference call, during which 15 minutes are devoted to resolving any lingering business issues from the week, and 45 minutes are dedicated to discussing a pre-assigned topic. One week, for example, the team discussed their favorite films and the personal insights they gained from them. Another week, team members discussed a book they’d read, and what they’d learned from it.The leader feels that the process has resulted in better team collaboration around work related issues, a greater understanding of the diverse backgrounds represented on the team and deeper personal relationships among co-workers.

Generational differences can and do affect communicationsWith five generations in today’s workforce, it should come as no surprise that the generations differ in their communication styles and preferences. However, particular attention should be given to millennials, who represent the largest share of the American labor force, according to the Pew Research Center. Because they are often tech-savvy and drawn to electronic forms of communication, leaders may actually need to encourage millennials to devote more time to in-person communication. For this cohort, texting is more socially acceptable than conversing in person.While millennials may be an easier generation for leaders to reach via technology because of their reliance on it, they may also be the group most likely to overlook the importance of nonverbal communication. As a result, they’re more susceptible to missing important cues and insights that could be gained by walking down the hall to a colleague’s office to chat rather than sending them a message through email.Technology offers an abundance of valuable new tools for collaboration, but they should not be mistaken as a substitute for the in-depth interactions necessary for effective leadership.

Becky set up a great site to keep track of all of our WINS, as we tend to only remember the ‘issues to make better.’

Becky made a quick survey we could use as a school or could just us it as a high school if we don’t want it to be all school: http://tinyurl.com/utvawins

It gets difficult to remember the wins. But every single day, each of us probably have a few wins, and over the course of a month that’s so many. We could share those wins in PD. ..With our board… With other stake holders.

iReady Assessments in math and reading: Good news, we met our goal of 95% of our students tested in both math and reading! We definitely have the most amazing team of teachers in the world! Now we are just getting those last few stragglers and new students to take it.

Here are all the items that are being talked about in a recent USBE USEAM (special education directors) meeting, including feedback on the possible changes to licensing, diploma options for sped, discussion of sped placement (continuum of services), funding, updated USEBE org plan, etc. I thought it would just be simpler to send everything so all of admin has the same information as we do. I highly recommend everyone look through the attachments.

MINDSET!! This is a great article for each of us to consider, especially as we undertake the challenge of increasing SAGE scores. I'd encourage you to take the 6 minutes this article suggests to read it!

The article links to another really interesting article on the Batesian Mimicry. I loved it - and challenge myself to look deeply to see if I am the real thing or a mimic. Here's the link, if you're interested: https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2016/12/batesian-mimicry/